Japan’s voters set to change leaders

Share via e-mail

TOKYO — Candidates made final impassioned appeals Saturday to Japanese voters a day before parliamentary elections that probably will hand power back to a conservative party that ruled the country for most of the post-war era.

While many voters remain undecided — reflecting widespread disillusionment with any party — polls suggest that the electorate will dump Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan three years after it swept to power amid high hopes for change.

The DPJ’s inability to deliver on a string of promises and Noda’s push to double the sales tax have turned off voters, who appear to be turning back to the Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP ruled Japan almost continuously since 1955 until it lost badly to the DPJ in 2009.

If the LDP wins Sunday, it would give the nationalistic Shinzo Abe, who was prime minister from 2006-2007, the top job again. His hawkish views raise questions about how that might affect ties with rival China amid a territorial dispute over a cluster of tiny islands claimed by both countries.

‘‘We want to restore a Japan where children are proud to have been born here. Please give us your hand,’’ Abe, who would be Japan’s seventh prime minister in 6 1/2 years, declared from the top of a truck at a campaign stop in Wako, a city northwest of Tokyo.

A win for Abe and the LDP would signal a shift to the right for Japan. The party calls for a more assertive foreign policy and revisions in Japan’s pacifist constitution that would strengthen its military posture. The controversial proposals include renaming the Self-Defense Forces to call them a military — taboo since World War II — and allowing Japanese troops to engage in ‘‘collective self-defense’’ operations with allies that are not directly related to Japan’s own self-defense.

With Japan’s economy stuck in a two-decade slump, the Liberal Democrats also call for more public works spending. They are generally more supportive of nuclear energy even though most Japanese want atomic energy phased out after a disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant last year.

Prime Minister Noda, meanwhile, has sought to cast the election as a choice between moving forward or going back to the old politics of the LDP.

‘‘It was of the Democratic Party of Japan who put in the effort to recover from Japan’s 20-year slump. Are we giving this up now and are we going back to the 20-year slump? We must not do that,’’ Noda told listeners in Tokyo.

Surveys this past week showed about 40 percent of people were undecided, reflecting a lack of voter enthusiasm for any party, as well as confusion over the emergence of several fledgling parties that have popped up in recent months espousing a wide range of views.

The right-leaning, populist Restoration Party of Japan, led by former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto — both outspoken, colorful politicians — is calling for a more assertive Japan, particularly in its dealings with China. But their forceful leadership styles and views on nuclear power have raised questions for voters.

Japanese newspapers project that the LDP will win a majority of seats in the 480-seat lower chamber of Parliament.